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Down by what amounts to a little more than one quarter of 1 percent of the more than 20,000 Republican votes cast on Tuesday, Ande Smith officially requested a recount Friday.

"I had said in the past we'd never had a bad day in the campaign. I think yesterday probably would have counted at our first, but we remain optimistic that the recount will show a different result," Smith said.

The current vote totals from Maine's secretary of state show mark Holbrook up by 55 votes, but there are also 2,318 blank Republican ballots.

That doesn't necessarily mean those voters didn't vote in this race.

"If somebody filled in both bubbles and clearly made a mark, say to cross one name over the other, an automatic voting machine would register that as a blank vote," Smith said.

Holbrook expects any errors to break evenly, not really affecting the end result.

"Based on what I've been told by people who have been in this business for a long time, if it was three or four, they said, 'Maybe,'" Holbrook said. "Fifty-four, 55, whatever it is today? Not going to change the outcome."

The two campaigns will meet with state election officials to decide how involved the recount will be.

The focus may just be on big cities, or the state could send state troopers to collect ballot boxes from all 118 municipalities in the 1st Congressional District.

Whoever wins will face congresswoman Chellie Pingree in November.

"I feel that the work that I've done and the way I stand on the issues is more representative of the 1st Congressional District than Mr. Holbrook," Pingree said. "But it will be up to the voters to decide. I don't take anything for granted."

Because that 55-vote difference is far less than the 2 percent threshold, the state will be paying for this recount, no matter how much it costs.